Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In a typical printing process, a computing device sends a print job—or printable data representative of a document or an image—to a printing device. Upon receiving the print job, the printing device then executes the print job. However, in some circumstances, the printing device may not be able to execute or finish execution of a print job. For instance, a printing device may experience an error (e.g. a paper jam) that requires the printing device to be serviced before beginning or resuming printing. As another example, a printing device may run out of printing supplies (e.g. paper, ink, toner, etc.) necessary to perform printing, which must be replenished before carrying out additional print jobs. In such circumstances, a typical printing device halts operation, preventing a print job from being carried out or prematurely ending a print job in progress.
In some systems, a printing device may alert or notify the computing device that requested execution of the print job that the print job could not be performed or completed. A user may then choose to perform the print job on a different printing device if the network contains multiple printing devices. However, this presents an inconvenience to the user, who must repeat the process of opening a desired document or image, selecting a print operation, choosing an alternative printing device, and then traveling to that alternative printing device.
In some situations, a user may request printing of a document and begin walking to the selected printing device before an error occurs. As a result, that user may not be aware of such an error until that user reaches the printing device and discovers that the print job was not completed. The user must then return to that user's computing device and repeat the printing process and select an alternative printing device with which to execute the print job.